We slept in late and arrived at the caverns at 10 am, an hour after opening.
We were surprised that there were already 4 buses and many cars there! We reserved places in a tour of the “Kings Palace” that left at noon. In the meantime we had breakfast in the Earthroamer. After eating, Jason and boys hiked down the mile long underground path to the base of the elevator shaft.
I looked around at the exhibits and, saving my knees, took the 800′ elevator down to meet them. It is amazing how large the caverns are! Some of the ceiling are 100 feet high. Several tours left at the same time and did not conflict with one another. I now understood where all the bus loads of people had disappeared to.
We met up with our guide and 40 other people for our mile long tour underground.
Despite the number of people, the tour was the best cave tour I’ve ever had. The guide was interesting, entertaining, you could hear him, and he didn’t waste time telling us Disney-based names of the formations.
Instead he spoke about the science: how caves are formed, history, etc. We were impressed with the sheer size of all the caverns.
At one point he showed us stalactites that had formed on an 86 year old man-made tunnel that connected two rooms. They were maybe 1/2 inch long.
This formation reminded Jason of something.
95% of the formations were not growing anymore. I wondered if that was due to human development of the cave, or if it happened naturally.
After the tour we followed the self-guided walk through the Big Room. It was yet another mile of narrow paved walkway in a large loop. We stopped often to take photos.
The boys were impressed with the cave but complained about our slow pace. I thought the bottomless pit was neat, even though it was only 140 feet deep. Jason liked how far you could see horizontally. With the lighted pathways, it was like looking across a dim indoor park with giant cathedral ceilings.
There are many areas of the cave system that are as of yet unexplored. Many other areas are shut off to the public and reserved for research purposes. One area is left completely alone for the thousands of bats that live there during the summer.
We emerged at 4:30 in time to see the sunset. We headed back to the campground where we stayed another night.
